Continuing now with a small series of snippets from the Guardian series, this time from the Winsford and Middlewich Guardian.

Onward to Wednesday, June 6, 1877 when the gossip column was encouraging visitors to the town saying: It is not every town that has the drawbacks that Winsford has and that can boast of such a beautiful sheet of water as the Winsford Flashes.

Go when you will; you are sure to find someone either enjoying a row on them and very likely one of each sex – or someone fishing.

To see the fishermen anxiously watching the ‘float’ for hours and hours makes one think of the saying of Dr Johnson – ‘Fishing-rod with a worm at one end and a fool at the other’.

People use the Flashes in the summer for recreation, but one serious drawback is the bathing.

Could not the Local Board take the matter in hand and prevent persons, bathing, except at certain hours of

the day, and in places that are not public.

At the top of the Flashes, the view is splendid, the different shades of green having a charming effect. What a place for an artist!

But who can paint like Nature?

Can imagination boast?

Amid its gay creation

Hues like hers the most?

  • The police ought to be more careful about putting handcuffs on persons.

The other day, a respectable young man was taken to Northwich handcuffed; he was on a charge that the magistrate would hardly listen to because it was so paltry.

The young man made no resistance but protested the handcuffs as he did not intend to shirk the enquiry.

Such a thing is a great shame and must be stopped.

  • The houses in Winsford that were pulled down are being built up again on the approved principle, namely that they can be raised when required.

The new shops in the Market Place have an exceedingly pretty appearance.

The old Market Hall looks almost buried, and the shops under the New Town Hall are in a bad state.